Watercooler: The Hidden Self-Evident
Afternoon, everyone. It's been a hectic morning here at Tennis, and I assume most of you are also doing the usual holiday juggling act this Christmas week. I won't have a red-meat post for you today, but if want me to kick-start the conversation, here goes: I just wrote a post for ESPN (it will run at some point this week, not sure of the precise timing) on two WTA players I watched closely on my recent visit to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy: Michaela Krajicek and Sabine Lisicki.
Both girls are 19, and while Krajicek is more accomplished (she was a Wimbledon quarterfinalist back in 2007), Lisicki also struck me has having enormous potential. Of course, it's a little deceptive to tell just from watching practice, because a player's A-game is more easily accessed when he or she isn't dealing with the stress of competition. In fact, writing that post I realized something I knew but had not thought about until forced to: That the ability to play your "practice" game in the formal setting of a tournament is a fundamental requirement for a top player, and something that's rarely acknowledged simply because it's assumed (I call it a hidden self-evident).
Anyway, Krajicek struggled in 2008, partly because of recurring knee problems. She was out of competition from early July until the fall, and her ranking plummeted (her year-end ranking for 2007 was 34). But she earned enough rankings points in the fall to earn her way into the qualifying draw for the Australian Open - a tournament that ought to be friendly to her game.
Lisicki has been steadily moving up. She started the year just inside the top 200, but her year-end ranking was a respectable no. 57. She told me she's playing Hopman Cup (with Nicolas Kiefer), and looking to do well at the Australian Open, where she made a quantum leap last year from the qualifying to the round of 32, where she lost to Caroline Wozniacki. You may have seen her in action in Fed Cup against a U.S. squad led by Lindsay Davenport - in fact, I think we had a good go-round about her game here at TennisWorld at that time.
The two youngsters (Lisicki was born in Germany, to Polish parents; Krajicek is Dutch, and the sister of former Wimbledon champ Richard Krajicek) have a few outstanding features in common: they're big (Lisicki is solidly built and 5-10; Krajick is leaner, but 5-9), they have plenty of artillery power, and they serve very - very - well. You can expect one or the other, or perhaps both, to come up pretty big in Melbourne.
Fire away, and feel free to go OT later.
-- Pete***